Essential Elements of a Great Meeting Agenda

I helped a COO cut delivery delays by 92% with one focused, 30 minute review a week. But it didn’t start that way. When I first met him, the teams were spending hours a week talking about priorities and alignment. They didn’t need that much time, They just didn’t know any different. Before I begin, a few terms I want you to be familiar with: Big Rocks - These are the most important goals of the week. We specify them, give a good definition of done, go over any questions, and then delegate them. Blockers - Anything that makes our big rocks impossible. These must be cleared ASAP. Openings - Optimizations that come up during our review, and are worth pursuing at this time. If they’re good ideas, but not worth pursuing now, we can still list them without an owner. With those out of the way, here is my condensed agenda for the most important meeting of the week: 1. Review last week Go over each Big Rock with the owner, as well as its status. If it’s still in progress, the owner should have an estimated completion date. If it’s too big to estimate, it’s too big of a rock. Chip it down. If it’s blocked, a fix needs to be identified and assigned with a deadline (more on that later). 2. Decide this week’s big rocks These are high leverage activities that will make everything else you do easier. They should be needle movers, not just busy work. As each is decided, discuss them in enough depth that everyone knows what the ideal outcome is, and how they can help deliver it. Clearly assign one owner to each rock. Confirm that they understand the outcome, and that all their questions have been answered. Document a clear first step so everyone knows how the ball is going to get rolling. 3. Blockers As you’re discussing past and future rocks, blockers will surface. These MUST be documented and assigned with clear deadlines. They should be assigned to the person who can clear them and 80% of the time that should NOT be you. If you’re having blockers assigned to you often, have someone shadow you on them a few times so you can eventually delegate to them. 4. Openings Throughout the discussions, opportunities for optimizations will also come up. These should only be pursued if 1) an attendee (not you) volunteers to take them on, and has the bandwidth to do so, or 2) they clearly tie back to a bigger objective that is already present. These are stretch goals unless they specifically become big rocks. Once they’re agreed on, assign an owner to them along with a clear next step so there’s a push to get the ball rolling. It may take a few times before ownership reviews like this become natural, but they are the single highest leverage activity you can do in only 30 minutes. I’ve even seen good reviews even start to replace the need for some of the other weekly meetings! 📌 Comment “Review” and I’ll send you my complete guide so you can start saving time too!

How I Lead Effective Meetings as a Program Manager at Amazon. Meetings can either be a powerful tool for decision-making or a frustrating time sink. Early in my career, I struggled with unstructured meetings—great discussions but no clear outcomes. One chaotic project, where we held frequent but ineffective syncs, taught me that meetings aren’t just for talking; they should drive action. Here’s how I lead meetings now: 1️⃣ Set a Clear Agenda (and Share It in Advance) Every meeting starts with a structured agenda that includes: ✔️ Objective: What we need to achieve ✔️ Discussion topics: Prioritized for focus ✔️ Attendees: Only those necessary 📌 If an agenda isn’t clear, I challenge whether the meeting is even needed. 2️⃣ Keep Meetings Decision-Oriented Before starting, I clarify: ✔️ What decisions need to be made? ✔️ Who is responsible for next steps? If discussions drift, I refocus: “This is important but let’s table it for a separate deep dive.” This keeps meetings productive instead of open-ended. 3️⃣ Ensure Follow-Through with Clear Recaps A great meeting means nothing if action items aren’t tracked. After the meeting, I send a quick recap with: ✔️ Decisions made ✔️ Action items + owners ✔️ Next steps 📌 I also log action items in a shared tracker to ensure accountability. Bonus: Reduce Unnecessary Meetings Before scheduling, I ask: Can this be solved via Slack, email, or a written update? At Amazon, concise narratives often replace meetings—allowing for more deep work. Final Thoughts A well-run meeting aligns teams, drives decisions, and prevents wasted time. The best compliment I get? “That was one of the most productive meetings I’ve been in.” How do you keep your meetings effective? #Meetings #Productivity #Leadership #ProgramManagement #Amazon

$36,000,000,000… That’s how much money U.S. businesses waste every year in useless meetings. That’s the equivalent of having 600,000 people each making $60,000 to sit in an office all day and do absolutely nothing. At Process Street, we’ve eliminated 90% of our “useless meeting time” And we made a guide on how we did it… It’s called, How to Run Business Meetings That Aren’t a Complete Waste of Time: 1. have clear objectives EVERY meeting needs a clear, written statement identifying the purpose of the meeting. The same way you hold an employee accountable to goals, you need to hold a meeting accountable to its objective. A good objective of a meeting could be the executive team discussing a strategic change and how to roll it out to the company A bad objective would be a roundtable status update that could’ve been an email. 2. Invite the right people If the meeting is not relevant to someone’s work. They are better off missing the meeting and just doing their work. 3. Stick to the agenda Do not just walk in to a 60-90 minute calendar block and start to casually talk about the objective. That’s a recipe for wasted time. Instead, decide what is going to be discussed in the meeting beforehand, set an agenda, and allot time for each specific item. Send the agenda to people inside the meeting before it begins. If they understand and can visualize the agenda throughout the meeting, it’s WAY more likely the agenda is actually followed. 4. Don’t let it be derailed Most meetings get derailed and off topic, especially when someone starts rambling. Whoever is in charge of the meeting needs to rule it with an iron fist and frankly cut people off if they get off topic. My policy here is to interrupt the rambler first and ask for forgiveness later. It may be a rude thing to do, but every 5 minutes someone rambles could mean 1 hour of wasted time if 12 other people are in the meeting. 5. Start and end on time If you have flex time where people can show up a minute or two late, or the meeting can go a minute or two over to finish the conversation, then you’ll always have meetings where both of those things happen. Just as you would hold the meeting accountable to its objective, hold it accountable to the clock. 6. No distractions Have you ever been in a meeting with someone constantly checking their phone? Or a zoom call where it’s obvious someone is doing emails? Create a 0 tolerance policy for this. Or, if someone believes they can check out of the conversation, they probably should have not been involved in the first place. 7. Create memos Meetings are useless without stated outcomes. Whatever the objective of the meeting was, create a memo with notes on who talked about what, key takeaways, action items, and whether the objective was completed or not. Then, share the memo with everyone who was in the meeting. Follow this process and I promise you'll run meetings 90% better than you currently are.